Chapter Fifteen

after completing which, readers are meant to look up Barbara Harris in order to better comprehend the author's boyhood crush

You cinch up what’s left of the American flag necktie and look in the mostly shattered hand mirror Billy is holding for you. The chinchillas have graciously shed enough fur to afford you a proper beard, and Billy himself guides you in its application.

“My own real beard is actually made of chinchilla hair,” says Billy, “even though I grew it myself.”

“What about the mullet?” you say.

“What about the mullet?”

“Well I can’t go around in a non-mullet. That’s one of your trademarks.”

“But this party-in-the-back is the source of all my Super Saiyan powers. If I cut it off and weave it into your hair, it’ll be like Superman 2 when he got inside that crystal and just turned into a regular dumbass.”

“I thought it was Superman 3 where he turned into a regular dumbass.”

“No, that’s when he turned evil. Robert Vaughan and Richard Pryor and he turned evil and had to have a fight with himself when the regular dumbass version of him strangled his evil self to death.”

“Well see what I mean? He was a regular dumbass in 3.”

“Well he didn’t so much turn into a regular dumbass as split into his good and bad selves, with his regular dumbass persona representing the good side.”

“How do either one of us know so much about these movies that came out well into the Before Times?”

“The stories were passed down through time. When my ancestor had all the world records, some of those records were achieved in the movie theater arcade where Superman II was playing.”

“Did you just say a Roman numeral? I thought it was styled Superman 2.”

“Nope, I distinctly remember my ancestor describing it as two I’s next to each other.”

“Hey, wasn’t longtime b-movie character actor, poor man’s DeNiro and Roger Corman company player Dick Miller in that?”

“You mean Dick Miller from The Explorers?”

“Yeah, wasn’t he in the restaurant scene? The guy beating up regular dumbass Superman? Or the cook?”

“No, he most definitely was not.”

“Are you sure? I could have sworn Dick Miller was in that scene.”

“Nope. Must be the Mandela effect. One of my precious family heirlooms is the IMDB printout from that movie, and no place does it ever mention Dick Miller. In fact, I have another heirloom printout from the Superman Wiki that says Miller did turn up in an episode of Lois and regular dumbass Superman. But no mention of Superman two I’s next to each other.”

You cross your arms. “Well I’m going to keep believing it was Dick Miller, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Maybe he did it under a pseudonym.”

“Why would he bother using a pseudonym?”

“Maybe it was one o’ them Alan Smithee scenarios?”

“Only directors were allowed to use the name Alan Smithee back then.”

“Well maybe he directed it.”

“Richard Lester directed it. Besides, nobody turns up in the cast called Alan Smithee.”

“You’re saying the cast as a whole was called Alan Smithee, and nobody turns up on it?”

Bu now it has turned into an Abbot and Costello routine, and luckily while you were being distracted by that conversation, Alan Smithee I mean Dick Miller I mean Billy Mitchell had dressed in all the clothes you’d been wearing—driving gloves, waistcoat, tailcoat with epaulets, jodhpurs, boots, blahblah whatever else, and finally, the top hat and goggles.

You hold up the broken hand mirror for him.

“You know, now that I see myself in this costume, the mullet just doesn’t go with the rest of it at all. Go ahead. Cut it off and use it as extensions for your own hair. But don’t expect to get Super Saiyan powers from it. Like Samson, these powers can only be obtained through the genuine article.”

You snip off the back of Billy’s hair and begin trying to weave it into your own.

“While you’re doing that,” says Billy, “I’m going back down into the foyer to try out my new magnification lenses.”

“Oh, don’t forget the crowning touch to the whole ensemble!” You produce a dab of spirit gum and apply the fake mustache atop Billy’s real one. “Now the look is complete!”

You carry on with the weaving of your hair as Billy returns to the foyer. He brings the goggles down over his eyes and presses the Viewmaster-style lever to switch to the magnification lenses.

“These things work great! I feel like I’m right up against everything I look at.”

“They’re meant for things a long way off.”

A knock.

Billy fiddles for the doorknob, finds it and pulls open the front door.

“Hey, it’s a giant nose!” says Billy.

Pew. Not pew! with an exclamation point, mind. The exclamation point is for unsilenced guns. Silenced pews get a full stop.

Billy’s right eye carried on looking at the over-magnified nose, but there was now a hole where his left eye used to be, a hole that continued through all the grey matter behind it and out the back of Billy’s head. And because of this hole, the grey matter ceased taking down any of the information relayed by the right eye. It stopped taking down all information, and it stopped responding with information of its own. In fact all of its information fell out through the hole as the head it was drilled through knocked against the chequered marble floor.

Upstairs in the bedroom, you’d heard the pew and the knocking sound, and the sloshing of grey matter losing all its information. You peer out from behind the doorway to see the assassin, opening his pocket watch to receive his next assignment. The hologram is unmistakable. Billy Mitchell VII.

He snaps the watch closed and whistles away, leaving the door open. You hear his bike rumble to life and fade off into the distance.

That was a pew. meant for you, as they say in Rhymoton. You really ought to feel guiltier than you do. If you hadn’t spent all that time convincing Billy it might be fun to swap places, that it’d be just like Freaky Friday, not the Jamie Lee Curtis - Lindsay Lohan remake or its sequel but the original Barbara Harris - Jodie Foster original, where Gomez Addams played the dad, married to Patti Duke in real life but not Sam Gamgee’s dad, although Sam did bear his last name—he was basically adopted by Gomez even though his real dad was like three or four other famous people. And when you put it like that, how could Billy Mitchell refuse? He’d always wanted to pretend to be Barbara Harris in a costume that didn’t remotely resemble Barbara Harris.

Well, at least he died doing what he loved, you think, and move on instantly.

Lest you think you’re some sort of psychopath, in your defense, Billy was the next guy up for assassination. You merely cut out the middleman, got it over with. He really ought to be thanking you. Of course, had he still been in possession of his powers, he might’ve been able to deflect the bullet. Or he might’ve at least seen the gun if he hadn’t been using the Viewmaster-style magnification lenses.

Oh well, you think to yourself. I guess I am a psychopath after all.

And you’d gone to so much trouble to save him from the acid storm too. Oh well, the author supposes. All we can do is get on with it. But it strikes you that now you’re left without any thematically appropriate transportation. Being a Saiyan, Billy was capable of flight, but you merely have the hair from a Saiyan braided onto the back of your own head.

You’ve gotta get outta here before the assassin comes back to check Billy’s underwear waistband to make sure he got the right guy. Did you ever write your name in yours? Well, here’s hoping Billy didn’t. And you aren’t about to check for yourself. You could always write your name on the waistband, cross out Billy’s name if it’s there already, write in yours, but there’s no way you’re going anywhere near those drawers. Or the rest of him, come to think.

You need as far away from this place as a vehicle can take you. You return to the garage and all the cars waiting pristine under their canvas coverings. You’re tempted to take one, but neither the original Billy Mitchell nor any of his six direct descendants were associated with cars, so you look around for anything else.

In the corner of the garage you spot the large old barrel the owner of the house used for going over Niagara Falls in back in the Before Times, when going over Niagara Falls in a barrel enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity. But it looks just like the ones from Donkey Kong, the game with which all Mitchells Billy have been associated since the very first one! And you imagine that since the barrel had been used for going over Niagara Falls in, it might have a few creature comforts that most barrels from the time would be lacking. Oh, and the way you know that it had been used for this purpose, the barrel’s license plate was IHEARTGOINGOVERNIAGARAFALLSINTHIS, more characters than was normally allowed, but in those days if you greased the right palm, you could get the license plate officials to look the other way.

The chinchillas look on as you wheel the barrel out onto the dusty plain and pop off the lid. Sure enough, the inside is covered in a deteriorating memory foam padding. A rectangle is cut into the padding, large enough for a single video screen, curved and concave to fit snug against the barrel. You push a button and to your amazement it flashes to life. Right now it just displays the phrase ‘try not to vomit’ in Arial Black.

“Gimme a push?” you call out to the chinchillas, who don’t speak any English but know intuitively what you’re asking because you’re saying it as you enter the barrel, and frankly what else could you be asking? They’ve seen Donkey Kong. They know what’s up.

With a twist you secure the lid back in place. The vomit warning fades away and it is now replaced by a view of the outside. For you see, on the lid, a bearing-mounted camera has been affixed to show you where you’re going without having to spin with the rest of the barrel. It’s a lovely invention, really. They thought of everything. You orient yourself for the best view of the screen and try to rock yourself forward in order to convey to the chinchillas that you’re ready for takeoff.